


Where They Weren't

by yamaguchi_tadashi



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Also yeah jordan and george are cute :/, Freckles, Harry Potter - Freeform, Other, This isn't even a ship fic it's just me having feelings about the close brotherly bond of the twins, Weasley twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 13:57:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6118528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yamaguchi_tadashi/pseuds/yamaguchi_tadashi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There had been three freckles right underneath his left eye. No one seemed to catch on that that was how to tell them apart, and that's what kept George together</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where They Weren't

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry okay  
> Mentions of Fred's death but i didn't think it needed the tag for that  
> This was written pretty hastily  
> I know Harry Potter series isn't cool anymore but i just needed to write about these two okay.....

Fred had always had three extra freckles, right below his left eye. Freckles graced his face, like points on a map, becoming almost indistinguishable from each other near the bridge of his nose. Those three extra freckles were light, and nobody, except Lee in their third year, had seemed to catch on that those freckles were how to tell them apart.

George couldn’t look in a mirror without looking for those three freckles. His whole life, it had been like looking at a glass, seeing himself reflected, the image only marred by those three freckles. George missed them. He missed the days spent staring at them as Fred talked about their next daring feat; it always seemed to be Fred needing to take their pranks to the next level. George didn’t mind. He loved the thrill, the laughter, the happiness it always brought him to just be with his brother. 

Their plotting was what got them through those rough years, when Voldemort came back, when Harry and the rest of the gang had to keep running just to stay alive, when everyone was on edge and hardly anyone smiled anymore. Their quick minds, their humour in the face of so much danger. They just wanted people to laugh again. 

They lived with Lee, in an apartment above their shop on Diagon Alley. When they broadcast the radio show, they moved location so they couldn’t be tracked down easily. But they always returned home in the end, where there was only warmth and a false sense of safety that they took advantage of, until they couldn’t anymore, when the dark was all but knocking their door down. 

It was those three freckles that told the two apart. It was those three freckles, when the dark finally blew the door in, that froze. His eyes were crinkled in an almost-laugh; he was smiling as he fell, and those freckles were bunched up beneath his eye, as if at any moment he would pop back up again and finish his hearty laugh and those freckles would go back to being wrinkleless orange stars on his skin. But they never did.

George could hardly look at himself without touching his cheek, just making sure that he was real, that his brother hadn’t decided to just play some joke and cover those freckles. He wouldn’t pop out of the mirror and proclaim that next, they should work on the Canary Tarts like they had planned to, for after they got home from Hogwarts that terrible night. (‘that is an excellent idea, why haven’t we started selling those yet?’) There had been no doubt in their minds that both of them would survive. It hadn’t even occurred to them that only one brother would leave the castle, crying and crying and wishing that he was dead too.

There were still nights when he cried. Lee would always hear him, would crawl into his bed with him and keep him close, kissing the spot the tears pooled, the spot where those three freckles weren’t. 

They would wake up the next morning as if nothing had happened. Lee would go to his radio studio, and George would run the joke shop. There was always an empty spot behind the counter, and the nothingness there haunted George. He knew one day, he would be able to pass by that spot without wanting to break down. One day he would be able to smile and laugh with Lee, that one day he would be over his brother’s death.

Today was not that day, though. It never seemed to be that day. And the hole made by the absence of those three freckles would never be filled.


End file.
